The Mekong River flows from China and is the lifeline for villages and towns in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. In all, about 60 million people depend on the river for food and income. With China building a dam and Thai multinationals buying up land along the river to grow sugar on a large scale, the livelihoods of millions and people, animals and plants are under pressure.
It is no secret that China has been working for years to tighten its grip on Southeast Asia. For example, it has already had three artificial islands built in the South China Sea in order to subsequently construct military bases on them. So too are the 11 dams China has been building in the Mekong since 2012. These barrages amount to an economic and ecological stranglehold which China has on South Asian economies and ecosystems.
Since the construction of the dams, the water level of the Mekong has plummeted. In 2019, the water level was lower than in the past 50 years. Add to this the effects of the climate crisis and you get a serious situation of persistent drought, flash floods and increasing poverty in the Mekong Delta. According to the Mekong River Commission, there are already 40 percent fewer fish in the river than a decade ago.
Thai sugar companies are taking the opportunity to buy up tracts of land in Thailand and Cambodia and grow large quantities of sugar on it. Backed up by foreign investors, these companies manage to turn the banks of the river into a monocultural wasteland from which only the company benefits.
Many villages and communities can no longer stand the drying up of the Mekong. Representatives from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand united in SEVANA and met in Bangkok this September and October. The Thai capital was holding the Mekong-ASEAN Environmental Week at the time, where politicians and lobbyists gathered to discuss plans for a sustainable future in Southeast Asia. SEVANA was also present to advocate for the rights of Mekong communities to have a say in the river’s future.
Het Actiefonds helped SEVANA host and accommodate the representatives of the Mekong communities. As a result, SEVANA managed to organize several activities and meetings where the communities could exchange information, as well as perform ceremonies on the river that officials and politicians attended too. Their presence was not beyond question, as the dam construction company had indicated in advance that they would not appreciate their attendance. Moreover, the company had distributed school supplies and clothes in the area where the ceremonies and actions in order to impede popular support for SEVANA.
Still, this does not deter the action group. Until the Mekong returns to its former state, they will continue to advocate an end to water dams, land expropriations and monoculture.
The River state of Nigeria is notorious for its oil drilling. There is very little regulation, which fossil fuel companies like Shell are eager to exploit. Despite numerous protests and court cases, the oil spills and flares continue to make the region unlivable for humans, animals and plants. This has to stop.
In 1995, nine Nigerian activists from Ogoni were sentenced to death for fighting against Shell’s drilling practices. Ogoni land was ravaged by oil spills and poor air quality, leaving residents in the area barely able to live.
Thanks to the dedication of Ogoni activists like Isaac Agbara, Shell was finally ordered to pay 45.9 billion naira (about 100 million euros, adjusted for inflation) in reparations to Ogoni land in 2021, thus putting an end to a 32-year-long court case.
But history is in danger of repeating itself. The Kereken Boue community is currently sounding the alarm. This community lives on the southern border of Ogoniland. They report an inexplicable and disastrous decline in life in their villages. Crops dry out and shrivel, fruits fall from their trees before they are ripe, black spots wander in the air above their heads, the stench of hydrocarbon fills the air and rainfall discolors. But most disturbing is the sudden death of people and animals.
The consequences of this grim situation are increasing poverty due to crop failures, village abandonment, and psychological complaints due to premature loss of loved ones. But so far, no official or politician seems to even care what happens to the Kereken Boue.
The Kallop Humanitarian and Environmental center is therefore organizing demonstrations in Port Harcourt, the administrative town in the province, to make the plight of the Kereken Boue known to the authorities. Oil companies have been destroying lives in the area for decades, and no lawsuit seems to stop them from continuing to drill. So, with support from het Actiefonds, they traveled to Port Harcourt, armed with banners and posters. They will not stand by as their homes and hearths slowly turn black with fossil fuels.
They are demanding climate justice and an end to the fossil industry. If nothing happens within three months, they warn, they will be forced to turn to direct action, such as highway blockades.
From May to December 2022, Movimiento Maricas Bolivia organized 7 different artistic street interventions to put queer indigenous identities in the spotlight during national holidays of the Catholic and Bolivian Calendar. The poetic interventions denounce homophobia in Bolivia, while at the same time critiquing the mainly white and racist existing LGBTQ+ community. Indigenous queer identities are often obscured in the mainstream struggle for acceptance and political equity. With their actions and art, Movimiento Maricas Bolivia wants to decolonize the mainstream idea of queerness that is a reaction to the heterosexuality imposed by the Spanish invasion. Their art expresses a more local, plural and Indian sexual identity to the public, that is not a reaction to heterosexual normativity but an expression of their indigenousness. ‘Memorial Abya Yala’ was their artistic intervention voor Decolonization Day (día de la descolonisación) on 12th of octobre.
12 October used to be Columbus day in Bolivia, but since 2011 it has officially been called Decolonisation day (Día de la descolonisación). The Movimiento Maricas Bolivia marked the occasion with a performance next to the statue of Columbus in La Paz to underscore the lost indigenous sexual and gender identities. The performance was called ‘Memorial Abya Yala’, the memorial for the continent widely known as South and Middle America, and was seen by roughly 200 bystanders.
The performer, wrapped in a whipala characteristic for indigenous Bolivian culture, accused the bible and Hispanic colonists of imposing heterosexuality and gender binarism on the continent and wrote the names of the lost indigenous sexualities on a big map of Abya Yala. They also read a poem by Francisco Godoy Vega. Here is a fragment of the poem la violencia naturalizada de santiago y el indio pícaro, accompanied here with an english translation:
¿tiene una erótica evo morales?
¿tiene una erótica la chola o la mapuche?
¿dónde queda la memoria sexual de nuestras culturas ancestrales?
¿qué fue del sexo moche?
nuestros cuerpos son erotizados cuando
al blanco le da la gana
la dictadura colonial sobre el cuerpo indio
sobre el deseo indio
es la afrenta a nuestras comunidades
somos re-expuestxs y exotizadxs
nos follan cuando quieren lxs blancxs
en su poder universal
does Evo Morales have an erotic?
does the Chola or the Mapuche have an erotic?
Where is the sexual memory of our ancestral cultures?
what happened to Moche sex?
our bodies are eroticized when
the white man feels like it
the colonial dictatorship over the Indian body
over Indian desire
is the affront to our communities
we are re-exposed and exoticised
They fuck us when they want to, the whites
in their universal power
See the whole intervention here:
Single-use plastic is polluting the environment and communities’ living spaces everywhere. The Community Action for Social and Envionmental Change (CASEC) in Makeni, Sierra Leone, is fighting for a plastic free society, at least in their town!
CASEC wants to abolish the use of single-use plastic products in Makeni, Sierra Leona. Since most of the plastic used in Makeni is not recyclable, lots of it ends up as litter on the streets and in waterways, or on illegal landfills, often on territories where people live. From time to time, these landfills are set on fire to clear space, spreading toxic smoke. The remaining plastic is – of course – not biodegradable and the toxic chemicals and microplastics that spread through the water and the soil damage crops and drinkable water, and can cause serious health problems for people, plants and animals.
Therefore, CASEC is campaigning on different levels of local society against the use of plastic. They focus on schools and food markets to raise awareness about the devastating impact of plastic products and inspire people to go plastic free. In addition, they also press local policy makers to take anti-single-use plastic measures, like better organizing the waste collection and recycling, lobbying for the production of biodegradable and recyclable plastics and moving the waste from illegal dump sites to official ones, creating healthier living environments. They equally hold talkshows on local TV to make the issue a hot topic.
CASEC is a Makeni NGO that addresses the disturbance of ecosystems at a local level, working on local solutions to protect the environment and all people living in and with the local ecosystems. CASEC also focusses on the sustainable management of natural resources, like local wood supplies, while helping communities to anticipate, cope and adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Het Actiefonds is proud to support CASEC in their campaigns for a healthier environment for all, because everyone deserves water without microplastics.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s term is coming to an end in 2024. He wants to stop this at all costs by delaying elections or changing the constitution so that he may run for a third term. The Socialist Union has launched a campaign to warn the population of the impending coup.
Corrupt President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo seems to have the wind in his sails. After two terms in office, his party says there is widespread satisfaction with his presidency in society and parliament. His coalition, meanwhile, includes seven parties, representing a total of 81 percent of parliament.
But Jokowi’s second term is coming to an end, and the Indonesian constitution states that no president may serve more than two terms. Not content with this, Jokowi is using the widespread support he enjoys to either postpone elections or amend the constitution to allow for a third term.
Jokowi’s party has one main argument for this constitutional amendment: the COVID pandemic deprived Jokowi of a few years of governance, so to speak, that he should be able to make up for. There are still major projects awaiting completion, including the relocation of the Indonesian capital to East Kalimantan, due to begin in 2024. This, of course, must be done under the president’s supervision.
The Socialist Union (SU) knows that Jokowi’s support is mostly the fruit of corrupt deals and cronyism. For example, his ministers were shareholders in companies from which the Indonesian government bought PCR tests during the pandemic. According to the SU, Jokowi involves as many parties and politicians as possible in his projects so that the political class benefits from the president’s tenure.
Much of Jokowi’s argument rests on the fact that he would be very popular among the Indonesian people. The SU wants to show that none of that is true. They are organizing several mass demonstrations throughout the country. With the help of Het Actiefonds, they flyered and postered to warn of the upcoming coup.
The SU often struggles against the authoritarian tendencies of the Indonesian state. For example, this august they organized several demonstrations throughout the country to protest the criminalisation of communism by the government.
Jokowi announced three years ago that he would move the capital from Jakarta to East Kalimantan in Borneo. The cost of the pharaonic project is modestly estimated by the government at $33 billion. The president wants to begin the move in 2024, which would require him to stay in power longer to oversee the operation.
The need to move comes mainly because of the great pressure on the capital, Jakarta. Ten million people now live in the city, plus another 20 million in its greater metropolitan area. Add to that the rising sea level and a water infrastructure that contributes to the sinking of the buildings, and you’re left with a ticking time bomb. Jakarta is slowly sinking into the ocean.
But that is not to say that moving the capital to Borneo is a logical solution. Indeed, it requires a colossal amount of housing construction to accommodate the one and a half million civil servants who must live there with their families. This puts even more pressure on the ecosystem on the already fledgling island, with no telling whether the plan will work. The amount of new housing will in all likelihood lead to a sink effect in East Kalimantan – just as is now the case in Jakarta.
But Jokowi can’t part with his pet project, and plans to bribe politicians and change the constitution to carry out his pharaonic project.
Limity jsme my (We Are the Limits) organized a climate camp in Ostrava, and successfully blocked the Svoboda coke plant with more than a hundred activists!
Climate Camp: for a just transition
Limity Jsme My organised many climate camps and direct actions in the past years, fighting against coal mines and fossil fuel plants in the Czech Republic. This year’s climate camp was focused not only on fossil fuels industries but also on just transition. In the Ostrava region, where the 5-day camp took place, the first coal mines recently closed, but with little justice for the locals during the transition process. Lots of mine workers lost their jobs and/or cheap energy supply, and most of the miner flats were privatized, resulting in social problems for local people. Addressing the social injustices, distraints and energy poverty in the region and its interconnected ecological and social consequences, Limity Jsme My wants to use the example of Ostrava to show what happens when these kinds of big transformations take place without public involvement. During the camp, talks, workshops and collaborations with locals were organized, set on the principles of non-hierarchy, mutual care and sustainability.
Direct Action: blocking the Svoboda coke plant
The direct action that followed the camp took place in the Svoboda coke plant, the perfect example of the importance of just transition that adresses both social and ecological problems and their global implications. After the decline of mining in the region, hard coal started to be imported from abroad to the coke plant. The produced coke does not stay in the region, and thus does not provide energy for local people, but is exported to the United States. On top of that, the coke production is so air polluting that it makes people move away to live in a healthier environment. The region around the Svoboda plant is one of the places where the highest concentration of highly carcinogenic benzo(a)npyrene was found. Keeping this plant open can not be part of a just transition! This is why over a hundred people successfully blocked the production and the export of coke from the coke plant area for a day! You can watch the video here and see the pictures here.
Limity jsme my
Limity Jsme My is a horizontally organized activist organization that wants to end the mining and burning of coal in the Czech Republic, and supporting instead a socially just transition to renewables. To achieve this, they organized five climate camps and several direct actions. They also cooperate with other social movements and environmental organizations, both on the local, national and international level, as they are part of a broader global movement for climate justice.
Het Actiefonds is very proud to have supported this action and to support the climate justice movement in general! Because we all deserve a healthy place to live, wherever we live.
Climate activists organized a successful skillshare camp to prepare forest occupations.
Everywhere in the Netherlands and Europe, old forests have to make way for the expansion of industrial areas and highways. A glaring example was the Sterrebos in Limburg, which was cut down this februari to allow the VDL Nedcar car factory to expand. After weeks of protest, the trees ultimately hit the ground.
Activists abroad often use forest occupations as a last resort when other campaigns have failed. For example, the Hambach forest has been the scene of a battle between climate activists and energy company RWE’s lignite mine for years. France’s various ZADs, most notably Notre-Dame-des-Landes, also show how a forest occupation can be an effective action strategy, even thwarting the construction of airports.
One may wonder how long it will take until there is a LelyZAD. In the Netherlands, the occupation of the Sterrebos was the first application of forest occupation on Dutch soil. And it won’t be the last. Consider, for example, Amelisweerd, a forest in Utrecht that is in danger of disappearing to allow the A27 to be widened. On ikgadeboomin.nl, you can already sign up to be a forest protector.
Climbers 4 Climate recently organized a skillshare camp in Germany with support from Het Actiefonds. For a week, 70 forest protectors trained with climbing, building tree houses, rescue operations and hanging banners among the trees. Other practical skills were also covered, such as building composting toilets and maintaining an action kitchen.
In addition, there was plenty of room for reflection during camp. Climbing actions often still elicit macho behavior, and privilege able-bodied cis-men. Hence, climbing trainings and other workshops were held without men, and there were plenty of moments to address the reproduction of social power structures within the climate movement. In this way, the group built a sustainable and reliable climate movement that doesn’t leave you hanging.
Want to join too? Go to ikgadeboomin.nl!
The very first LGBTQI+ Parade organized in Milicz was a big hit, and many more will follow!
In May 2022, over 250 people took to the streets of Milicz, Poland, for more tolerance towards the local LGBTQI+ community. In recent years, the Polish ruling party and the Polish president have been leading a campaign against the LGBTQI+ community, together with the Catholic Church. This resulted in an increase of hate speech, physical violence and even the establishment of so-called “NO LGBT-zones” in several Polish cities, and the increase of suicidal thoughts and tendencies among young LGBTQI+ people in Poland. Myślmy organised this first parade in Milicz to both show support to the local LGBTQI+ community and to strive for queer liberation in the region and the local government.
Myślmy – “Let’s Think” in English – is an association working on diverse topics, all having to do with human rights – from fighting against restricting abortion laws to the humanitarian disaster at the Polis-Bellarusian border. Not associated to any political party, they form an independent group of volunteers. With a strong belief in local change through local commitment, they organise workshops, cultural events, protests.
And now also this LGBTQI+ Parade that they plan to organise every year, because it was a big success. Under the banner of “Myślę-czuję-akcpetuję” (which means “I think, I feel, I accept”), the Parade brought together people from Milicz and other Polish cities. With the help of Het Actiefonds, the Parade was a fun and safe event. The speeches, the music, the samba band, the beautiful artwork and the extra safety guards made the Parade an event to look forward to every year, to celebrate the LGBTQI+ community in Milicz, Poland and throughout world. Watch the video of the event here, or read more about it here in Gay Times. Because everyone deserves to love and be in peace.
The housing crisis is affecting much of the Dutch population. But internationals are also struggling.
The University of Groningen (RUG) is so eager to build an international reputation that it is one of the biggest contributors to the ongoing housing crisis in the city. Every year we read reports about how students – especially international ones – are struggling to find a room. The university had even set up an emergency tent camp four years ago to stem some of the housing crisis, to no avail.
Meanwhile, a pandemic and a recession later, and the problem has simply gotten worse. The waiting time for social housing has risen to eight years. Homeless students occupied the RUG’s Academy building last year in protest. Indeed, between 2020 and 2021, the housing shortage increased by some 4,500 more homeless students (26,500 in total), not to mention the rents the lucky few have to cough up. Homeowners are eagerly taking advantage of the situation to make students pay exorbitant rents. After all, those students can borrow extra when they don’t have the money, right?
As dastard as this way of thinking is, it doesn’t even extend to the 9 thousand internationals who can’t simply borrow from their governments. They arrive in a university town that barely has room for them, without being noticed beforehand about the severity of the situation. On top of that, this group is not entitled to a free public transport, since these students are not Dutch citizens. As a result, even finding housing outside Groningen city is not an option for them because of the expensive commuting costs. After all, don’t forget that the Netherlands has the most expensive public transport in the EU!
The PvdA and the CU are proposing banning temporary rental contracts. This may seem like a good solution, since landlords like to use these contracts to systematically raise the rent. But permanent rental contracts also mean another obstacle for foreign students who only come for one semester or year. This way, internationals would still remain the brunt of the failing Dutch housing policy.
Woonstrijdkamp demands concrete solutions to the housing crisis in Groningen, such as affordable housing, free emergency accommodation and more housing on the university campus. In addition, the government should also grant free public transport to international students. With support from Het Actiefonds, students camped out in the Noorderplantsoen the weekend of Sept. 9-11 to call attention to the ongoing housing crisis, demonstrating for better housing rights.
Because houses are for people, not for profit.
Residents of Mbonjo and Souza (Cameroon) protect their cemeteries from Socapalm’s encroaching oil palm plantations.
It’s not the first time palm oil production has caused problems. It is well known that Indonesia and Malaysia cut down large parts of their tropical jungles to make way for oil palms, with major consequences for biodiversity and and the climate. But the residents of Mbonjo and Souza show how not only wildlife is suffering from the growing palm oil plantations.
Alphone Toko Sene, longtime resident of Mbonjo, can’t stand it anymore: when he walks to the cemetery to honor his aunt and uncle, he watches suspiciously as oil palms gain ground. The land is owned by Socapalm, a large Cameroonian agribusiness company, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Socfin. In 2010, Socapalm already managed nearly 80 thousand hectares of land in Cameroon, mostly in rural and remote areas, all of which are earmarked for palm oil production. Socapalm allows the inhabitants of Mbonjo to enter their cemetery for now, but in no way wants to cede the land under which the village’s ancestors are buried.
According to Socfin, Socapalm’s future is “inextricably linked to the sustainable development of local populations and economies.” Yet a different picture emerges when we listen to the residents of Mbonjo-Souza, namely that nature and residents must give way as much as possible to make way for the lucrative palm tree. Toko Sene: “Our loved ones are buried here. It is not normal for this place to be taken by the plantations of this agro-industrial company. We want them to respect our sacred places.”
Despite persistent complaints from Mbonjo-Souza, Socapalm even received the Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) label last year.
So time to move to action. With a 300-person demonstration and relatively high media coverage, residents in August managed to raise Socapalm’s hypocrisy, televise debates between village leaders and administrators, and sit down with Socapalm itself. The dialogue seems to have finally begun. Now it is to see if the residents manage to get their cemeteries back from the farm.
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